Hollywood Global Warming: Difference between revisions

The Earth's climate is changing; since the Industrial Revolution, greenhouse gas production (and other human industrial activity) has been increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and increasing the global average temperature with it<ref>The "speed" of this change has been on the order of 1 degree Celsius per century -- which sounds slow, but is more than 10 times the pre-industrial long-term average warming or cooling rate of half a degree C per millennium -- and it may remain so or become as much as 5 degrees C per century in the later 21st century depending on how human industry changes (or [[Head-in-The-Sand Management|doesn't change]], in the worse cases).</ref>. Nobody in the scientific community<ref>Not including people being paid by groups with a vested interest in not admitting this is real.</ref> disputes that it is happening; the only lack of scientific consensus is on exactly what the impact on day-to-day life is (or will be). This is because the changes either take decades to manifest (e.g. sea level increase, ocean acidification), or interact with complex phenomena that happen already (e.g. a projected increase in intensity or frequency of hurricanes).

== [[Video Games]] ==

* This trope is one of the prime features of the Earth sim game ''[[Fate of the World]]''.

* In keeping with its [[Cyberpunk]] setting, ''Jump Raven'' takes place in a USA that's been sold off to the highest bidders, wracked by global warming and [[Wretched Hive|militias of street thugs]]. You spend the game in a future New York where it's [[The Night That Never Ends|always night]] and enormous walls have been placed to keep back the ocean.

* In ''[[Civilization]] IV'', Global Warming is one of the disasters that can strike your larger cities in the late game. The effects of "global warming" in game are bizarre, strike locally and aren't restricted to coastal towns or other locales most likely to be affected by actual global temperature increase. Just imagine a news story about buildings being DESTROYED in downtown ''Denver'' by GLOBAL WARMING and you'll see how strange this gets. The older games treated it more severely, however, with a global meter that tracked pollution output and would do nasty things like raise sea levels, destroying any cities or units on coastal plots, although some of the weird effects might be explained by exceptionally strong storms and such.

* In ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', runaway pollution can make terrain change, earth sink, and if you don't have a Pressure Dome, the rising water can destroy cities (and units [[Video Game Time|who apparently couldn't escape from the slowly raising water]]). But fear not, because with a Pressure Dome the city becomes a floating city, plus your formers can raise the land, and if you get the Planetary Council to agree, you can launch a solar shade to cool the planet.

** The Planetary Council can also decide to melt the polar ice caps, causing global warming ''on purpose'' (which isn't as nonsensical as you might think, they are [[Terraforming]] Planet after all). You can arrange this in order to flood your rival's coastal cities.

* In ''[[Brink]],'' global warming has caused the seas to rise, covering most of the Earth.

* In the [[PS 1]] game ''Submarine Commander'', the Earth experienced global warming so fast that the crew of the titular submarine doesn't realize it, and when they surface, it's all sea. The ending is even more absurd: {{spoiler|the inverse, global ''cooling'', happens just as fast, via '''satellite'''. It's so fast that after the final battle, your submarine that took catastrophic damage and was sinking, is rescued by water levels receding so fast that the submarine is stranded on top of high-rise buildings.}}

* This is one of the possible consequences of letting your ecosystem become unbalanced in ''[[Spore]]''. You can cause it yourself by running around enemy planets with a heat ray, causing settlements there to undergo [[Critical Existence Failure]].

** Curiously, if you reverse the process fast enough after they capitulate, you can preserve the T3 rating of the planet with all the plants and animal.

* Global warming is a part of the dystopic backstory of ''[[Frontlines: Fuel of War]]'', with a "super-hurricane" hitting Alaska in 2021.

* The [[PlayStation 2]] flightsim ''Lethal Skies'' is set in an [[Ocean Punk]] type setting after melting glaciers have flooded most of the planet.

* Happens in ''[[Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire]],'' when the villains' attempt to control weather-based legendaries lead to massive climate changes threatening to wipe out humanity. Since this set of games (and the ''Pokémon'' franchise as a whole) does appear to have subtle environmental messages in place, it may well have been intentional.

* ''[[Battle Engine Aquila]]'' is based during a war over the 13 remaining islands after the sea level rises.

* ''[[Captain Planet and the Planeteers]]'' (of course) had a [[Wonderful Life]] episode in which Wheeler didn't join the Planeteers (and some of the villains went into the past to increase pollution levels) showed Manhattan half-submerged by the Atlantic Ocean in the the alternate future.